Additional voices for text to speech?

CrossWind said:

I am also hoping to find an alternate voice to Ana. I am hearing impaired, my challenge is the higher voice ranges. I adjusted Ana to the lowest setting possible, and slowed her down, but am still having challenges hearing her. What I need is a baritone or bass voice, even a tenor voice is a challenge to hear. I am also having issues with 'double reading' ~ it's as if she's reading every sentence twice, on top of each other -but not simultaneously, a sort of echo.

I went to the link posted above, but it was an article that was above my head.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Sushi

Welcome to the forum,

I'm afraid there's no free voices I'm aware of, that link above does mention a

couple of Pay for solutions for adding voices, I'll post the links for you if your

interested. They are not cheap!

Here's one with a free trial, and a selection of voices.

Text to Speech Software with AT&T Natural Voices™, Acapela™, Nuance™ Voices

This one has a free trial also and different voices.

Acapela Group infovox Desktop for Windows

Sorry that's the best I can find for you.

Hey, I came across this today. hope it helps, but you probably already found solutions to your problems by this time.
Austininsac

Like others here, I am evaluating "Text To Speech" packages and voices. And like many of you I want more than MS Anna's voice in MS TTS.

I recently downloaded the free trial version of Ivona 2 to evaluate it. After it was installed I noticed that the voices from Ivona 2 showed up in the "Text to Speech" tab of "Speech properties" in the control panel. I clicked on "Voice Preview" and heard nothing. I then went into the "Playback" tab of "Control Panel / Sound" and changed my default speakers from the external speakers connected to my sound card to my Plantronix USB headset. I then tried the "Voice Preview" in "Speech" again and it worked with my headset. What was the difference between my headset and the external speakers? I didn't know or care. I decided it was easier to just uninstall the sound card driver and then re-install it. So I did that and then went to the "Playback" tab of "Sound" and changed my default speakers back to the external speakers. I went back to the "Speech" tab again and clicked "Voice Preview" and this time it worked with my external speakers.

The short of it is that I installed the free trail version of Ivona 2 TTS with seven of it's 64 bit voices, uninstalled the sound card driver, then re-installed the sound card driver and I now have 8 voices that work in Windows 7 - 64 bit "Text To Speech". I can set any of them as the default voice.

I suspect that the seven additional voices will stop working when my trial period of Ivona is up, but I will cross that bridge when I come to it. At least I know it can be done and how.

I hope this helps someone. As always, your mileage may vary.

As a side note, I like Ivona's British Amy voice.
I also evaluated the free Natural Reader TTS package and was unimpressed with it.

I'm absolutely disgusted that four years have passed and Microsoft still hasn't supported any other TTS voices besides their one incredibly crude 1990's quality 'Anna' with her extreme and nasal American accent and absolutely--bordering on Lovecraftian in mind bending insanity inducing terror--horrific ability to read text. Stumbling over even the most basic of words, Anna makes Siri sound like a freakin' sentient being that would pass the Chinese room test in a heartbeat and fool people it's a real person.

Anyone who has listened to a novel read by Anna will most probably agree; and in an era where discrimination against those who have a disability it is even more disgusting that no effort is made to improve their operating systems usability for the blind and those who are hard of hearing. It's 2014 ffs. People shouldn't have to pay thousands for software 'suites' providing something that should be incorporated into all operating systems by default. The support for accessibility for Apple's OS' and even most flavours of 'nux make W7 seem more like W3.0. Shame on Microsoft for being so banal and bone idle.

Thank you on behalf of the users who are impaired to all of those who have provided information. As an able bodied person who merely has an interest in accessibility tools and enjoys testing such technology, it is quite an eye opener at how forward thinking many organisations are versus the backwards mentality of others. The difference is absolutely night and day, organisations are either fantastic, or absolutely abhorrent bordering on criminally negligent and uncaring. Unfortunately most are the latter.

Paying exorbitant fees for extra third party voices is absolutely absurd, and offensive. My iPhone has a dozen voices and it's a PHONE. This is an operating system used by most computer users the world over and it has ONE voice? Absolutely patently absurd. .__.